From Centerville to Helltown

Here on ‘Ol Cape Cod, the terms "art" and "artist" tend to paint images of seascapes and sunsets, old women with floppy hats and men in berets with pursed lips, staunchly posted at every available scenic vista and busily pushing paint into familiar patterns.

FLIGHTS OF FANCY – Welcome to the wonder-filled world of Centerville artist Joey Mars. A mainstay of Provincetown’s Helltown Workshop, which has a new show opening tonight (May 28), he’s also featured at the new Found on Cape Cod gallery and gift shop on Route 28 in Mashpee next to Polar Cave.

Joey Mars cultivates outsider art

Here on ‘Ol Cape Cod, the terms “art” and “artist” tend to paint images of seascapes and sunsets, old women with floppy hats and men in berets with pursed lips, staunchly posted at every available scenic vista and busily pushing paint into familiar patterns.

There is a subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, changing of the guard happening however, as more and more resident and wash-a-shore artists shake what has become the status quo.

One such artist is Centerville resident Joey Mars. Perhaps best known on the Cape as the fellow behind the many colorful and cartoony graphics that emanate from Provincetown’s venerable outpost of all things funky, Shop Therapy, he is better know throughout the rest of the world as a counterculture artist of the highest regard, having had his menagerie of freaky characters represented on t-shirts, collector cards, album covers and merchandise for bands such as the Grateful Dead, Morphine and Aerosmith.

Coming as he did from Worcester and Boston’s art and music scenes, Mars’s path to the Cape is the stuff of urban legend.

“I met Ronny (Hazel, owner of Shop Therapy) in the summer of 1990… Because friends of mine were doing a comic book shop, they created Daddy Rabbit’s Comics, they were on Standish Street, we all would come down, and that was our summer cottage, we slept in the store. One of us would come down, work it for a few days and stay. I was living in Worcester, I was on unemployment ‘cause I was cooking for a fraternity, I had summers off, and one of our guys got involved with one of Ronny’s exes, and that’s how we met Ronny. “

Mars’s relationship with Ronny grew quickly, from doing some t-shirt designs to one day being asked to go to abroad with him to China and points beyond.

“I started doing a little side project here and there for him, and he had started to travel around the world to import, he was pretty much traveling with the women who worked for him to give everyone something to do in the winter, and creating an import business. Something fell through, and they couldn’t travel with him, so I got a call, “hey, you wanna go to China?” I said, “yeah, why not?” He picked up the hotels and plane tickets, and had me working as a consultant, and working on some graphics. By doing that… I became like his right hand man, so when we came back I needed to stay involved because I had taken all the notes, I had all these contacts… That led to me finally moving down, with a bigger involvement.”

One thing that’s apparent right off the bat is that Mars’s art isn’t your, shall we say, typical Cape landscapes and beach scenes, though he is quick to point out the natural world inspires his psychedelic renderings as much as it does any traditional artist.

“A lot of it is nature, the very, very organic rhythm… But I paint from the inside of my mind, it’s an exploration, but I’m into, you know, the consciousness within nature. I would almost say that may be the biggest driving factor at this point. Is there, and of course there is, but how can we identify it, the consciousness that exists within nature, within plants, the information exchange that goes on? Are there other dimensions, how did we all get here… Are we stardust, are we spores? I’m a big fan of paleontology, the whole element of when the fish started walking out of the sea, when did it start breathing, the similarities between species, look at a whale skeleton, I mean, if you can’t see the similarities to a human skeleton, well then you’re blind. I’m also drawn to certain icons, I have a certain stable of characters that come out, I like drawing a lot of these things because I can get so into a sort of meditative state that then new things slide in. And really, it’s all about the new thing that slides in that creates that spark. That gives me the rush, and keeps me coming back for more. That’s what I get out of it… No one likes looking at this stuff more than I do.”

In response to the somewhat rigid confines of the “acceptable” art world here on the Cape, Mars and a group of four other local artists have come together this year to start the Helltown Workshop in Provincetown, which launched its first show of the year a month ago.

“They started last year. It was a very loose partnership of five people. They did a couple shows and I did the American Zombie show with them on Halloween,” Mars said. “It went really well. Then they did a Christmas show, the Black Market Art Bazaar, and then pretty much closed for the winter.”

Unfortunately, two of the original members of the Helltown group left this spring, and the gallery was heading toward a permanent hiatus, but at the last minute they asked Joey and another local artist, Scott Bruns, to join, which they did.

“I was thrilled with it… We came together, boom! Created a vision for the summer, said okay April 30th will be our first show, we’ll do a group exhibit to launch the summer, created a summer schedule, and bang! It’s all good… It’s all about freedom, really. The people who are doing it, they want to present something different, whether it’s an alternative form of low brow, or experimental, or outsider, it’s about expression… It’s about showcasing a new bourgeoning art scene here on the Cape that started years ago with street art, with Basquiat, with Haring, it went from there and exploded to LA and New York and Paris, and now it’s finally reaching the Cape.”

You can see more of Joey Mars at his Web site www.JoeyMars.com or check his work in person at the Helltown Workshop, 237 Commercial St., 2nd Floor, Provincetown. “Inked,” an exhibit of art inspired by tattoo, opens May 28 with a reception from 7 to 10 p.m. and runs through June 6. See more tonight at the grand opening of Found on Cape Cod, a gallery and gift shop on Route 28 in Mashpee next to Polar Cave.